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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28176612">A Horse Of A Different Color</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poemsingreenink/pseuds/Poemsingreenink'>Poemsingreenink</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnificent Seven (2016)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Single Parents, no horses were harmed in the making of this fic, tired single dad's club</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 20:20:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,583</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28176612</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poemsingreenink/pseuds/Poemsingreenink</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Single father Billy Rocks drops his daughter off at summer camp.</p><p>Secret Santa gift for Little_Ogre!</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Goodnight Robicheaux/Billy Rocks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>36</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Horse Of A Different Color</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/little_ogre/gifts">little_ogre</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Billy didn’t know what he’d expected dropping his daughter off at summer camp was going to be like, but at this point so many unexpected things had disrupted his life that he felt justified in his ignorance.</p><p>He, for instance, hadn’t expected his partner of ten years to decide that a relationship that had included immigration, marriage, citizenship, a new job, an adoption and what Billy had thought was love, to be a mistake. He hadn’t expected him to move to San Francisco at a speed that made Billy’s head spin, but more than anything he hadn’t expected him to return their daughter’s letters unopened, leave her texts unanswered, and dodge every Zoom call she tried to schedule.</p><p>A kind and selfless person would have been able to forgive the first two things, and only be truly angry about the slight to their child. Billy, who had never considered himself to be particularly kind or selfless, was incandescent with a terrible concoction of rage and hurt that liked to invoke all three things, all at once, and all the time.</p><p>He hadn’t possessed the energy to splice out whether he or Jee-young had gotten the rawer end of the deal, and eventually just decided if they were both going to be terribly wounded, they should just do it together. Jee-young’s anger was his anger. Her shock was his shock. Her pain was his pain, and she had responded by clinging tight to him. They were a team. A father and daughter who loved each other so fiercely that nothing could break their bond.</p><p>It was why today, the day Jee-young turned and unleashed the full strength of her seven-year-old fury onto him was going on the calendar as the worst day of his life.</p><p>“You just want to get rid of me!” Jee-young signed with dizzying speed. Her signing was usually a crisp and sharp thing. Now, her hands shook at a frantic blur of movement that anyone who wasn’t fluent in ASL would have had a hard time following.</p><p>Thankfully, they were surrounded by almost nothing but people fluent in ASL who seemed to have no trouble eavesdropping.</p><p>Billy sunk down to one knee so he could meet Jee-young’s impossibly wide and wet brown eyes. His shirt was soaked through from the Louisiana humidity, and he’d cinched his belt too tight which meant it dug into his stomach from this position.</p><p>“I am not!” he signed back. “That’s not true!”</p><p>“You are leaving me here forever!” Jee-young insisted.</p><p>“For the summer!” Billy responded. “Only for the summer! Eight weeks total.”</p><p>As angry as he was, he wasn’t a complete idiot. Jee-young needed things that he couldn’t provide. Friends for one thing. Other children like her who would answer her mass string of emojis with their own mass string of emojis. Maybe someone who knew what the hell a Akhal-Teke horse was without having to look it up or how to navigate whatever terrible social media app was coming down the pipeline.</p><p>“It’ll be fun!” Billy signed. “Remember, we talked about how much fun you’ll have?”</p><p>“No! No!” she signed, throwing her entire body into each ‘no’ as tears slid down her round cheeks. “No! No! No!”</p><p>“Horses!” Billy signed desperately. “There are horses here! Remember the horses?”    </p><p>But even Jee-young’s equine obsession couldn’t break through the panic and rage that was humming through her tiny frame. Billy had never seen his daughter so angry let alone angry at <em>him</em>. He was at a complete loss on how to handle it, but he did know one thing. She needed to stay. She needed to try this. If he crumbled. If he took her back to the car and drove the hours back to their apartment in Baton Rouge, then she’d be worse off for it.</p><p>He was scrambling to find a way for her to understand that when a little girl with hazel eyes, freckles across her nose, and a hot pink hearing aid bounded over Jee-young’s side. She tapped Billy’s weeping daughter on the shoulder to get her attention.</p><p>Jee-young looked at the new girl with a mix of such powerful suspicion and irritation that only further solidified Billy’s resolve that his daughter needed to at least try summer camp.</p><p>“Horses!” The new girl signed.</p><p>Then, as if summoned by his own sheer desperation, a large black horse wearing a bright blue harness appeared at Billy’s shoulder.</p><p>Billy pushed the strands of sweat soaked hair that had escaped his tie out of his face. The heat had clearly gotten to him. Baking his brain to a temperature that created a horse-shaped hallucination so perfect it even smelled correct.   </p><p>The hallucination shoved its head against Billy’s chest, and bit off one of his shirt buttons.</p><p>“Hey!”</p><p>Billy tried to push the horse away, but it dove back into his chest this time effectively shoving him a few steps back before taking another one of the buttons with. Billy felt the soft lips of the horse tickle his belly, and he squawked in protest. Teeth were going to be next, and a horse bite would just be the perfectly placed cyanide filled cherry atop his day. </p><p>He hadn’t fought anyone in at least three years (four months and seven days), and he didn’t want to break the streak by punching a horse (something Jee-young would never forgive him for), but he was quickly running out of ideas.</p><p>He was flirting with the idea of running when a hand grabbed the animal’s harness.</p><p>“Let me help you there, friend.”</p><p>A weathered looking white man with a crooked smile, bright blue eyes, and a goatee in need of a trim appeared in Billy’s sight line.</p><p>“Now why do you have to act so very rude?” the man scolded as he pulled the animal away from Billy.</p><p>The horse responded by trying to toss its head, and snorting.</p><p>“Yes, yes,” the stranger said with a fond roll of his eyes. “You’re right in all things. Of course you are.”</p><p>When the smiling man led the horse back to Jee-young her tear-stained face was transformed. For all that she’d read about them, memorized the Wiki page, watched <em>Black Beauty</em>, <em>Gakseoltang</em>, <em>Hidalgo</em> and <em>The Black Stallion</em> so many times Billy could quote them, and fallen asleep clutching a stuffed version of the horse from <em>Frozen II</em>, Jee-youn had never actually seen a horse up close.</p><p>In a move that turned at least a third of Billy’s hair gray, his daughter boldly marched forward, reached up and patted the animal’s nose. Behind her, the freckled girl seemed to buzz with excitement as she bounced on the balls of her feet.</p><p><em>If that thing bites my kid, </em>Billy thought, feeling dazed. <em> I'm going to skin it.</em></p><p>“What’s his name!?” The freckled girl signed.</p><p>“Nokk,” the stranger said, and then finger spelled it with his free hand. “N-O-K-K.”</p><p>“Like in <em>Frozen</em>!” Freckles shrieked, signing her elation to the rest of the crowd at the same time.</p><p>Jee-young looked a fascinating mix of nauseous and happy. Like she was full of a sloshing, liquid joy and not entirely sure how to deal with the unfamiliar sensation. The thought made Billy ache.</p><p>The stranger straightened up, and gave Nokk a suspicious look before releasing the lead rope so both of his hands were free.</p><p>“You two want to help me put him back in the barn?” he signed, and then offered the rope to Jee-young.</p><p>She grabbed the rope with both hands and nodded wildly. Pig-tails flapping so hard Billy thought she might take off.</p><p>The man shambled away towards the camp, and a line of excited campers peeled away from their parents to follow. Jee-young didn’t look back. Billy told himself was for the best, but waved farewell anyway.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The car was unspeakably hot even with the windows rolled down (Not that the driver side window could be rolled all the way up anymore). He should start the damn thing and hit the road. The air conditioning was broken, but a hot breeze was better than no breeze.</p><p>He didn’t.</p><p>Instead, Billy let his forehead rest on the steering wheel, and felt like the worst father in the world.   </p><p>He’d done the right thing. He <em>had</em>. He’d gotten her to camp. He’d left her at the camp, and unless disaster happened he would see her again in a few weeks when he return for parent’s day. She would make friends (or possibly enemies), ride horses (all big enough to trample her), swim in a lake (where she could drown), and try her hand at archery (Which would really bite Billy in the ass if she never forgave him for this).</p><p>Now all that was left to do was turn the key in the ignition, drive home, and make a frozen pizza that he would eat alone in his apartment because he’d done the right thing, and left his sobbing daughter in the middle of the woods to be cared for by strangers, associate with hooligans, and possibly learn to make meth in arts and crafts.</p><p>He was doing great.</p><p>“Well, hello again, friend!”</p><p>Billy did not look up. He couldn’t look up. If he looked up the very fragile hold he had on today (on the last year) was going to disintegrate.</p><p>“Aw, hell. You okay?”</p><p>“Yes!” he snapped.</p><p>There were tears pooling in Billy’s eyes, and he blinked rapidly hoping his discourage any of the waterworks before they could fall.</p><p>“Here why don’t you take this.”</p><p>Billy’s head snapped up, ready for a fight and came face-to-face with the same goateed man who’d pulled the horse away from him earlier. He still had that crooked smile on his face, American’s were far too smiley a people, and he was offering Billy an honest to god handkerchief.</p><p>“I don’t need that,” Billy said, still blinking.</p><p>A renegade tear tried to escape only to be impaled on one of his eyelashes.</p><p>“Aww, come on now. There’s no shame in a good cry. First time dropping a kid off at camp?”</p><p>“Shouldn’t you be with the horses?” Billy snapped.</p><p>“Oh no, no,” the stranger said. “I’m not one of the councilors. I’m just a parent who knows the lay of the land.”</p><p>The man was wearing a cowboy hat, a blazer over a Creedence Clearwater Revival t-shirt, and a pair of honest to god alligator cowboy boots. In the mix of that disaster of an outfit, it was the blazer that finished Billy off. That a man could look as cool as a cucumber while wearing a second layer in humidity that had turned Billy into a melting ice cream cone made something furious rise in his chest. Billy grabbed onto the anger like a desperate man, snapped his attention forward, turned the key in the ignition and stepped hard onto the gas pedal.</p><p>The engine turned over once, sputtered and then died.</p><p> </p><p>As it turned out Mr. Carries-Around-A-Cloth-Handkerchief-Here-In-The-Twenty-First-Century had a name; “Goodnight Robicheaux, or Goody to my friends.” He also had a tow-truck and an auto repair shop back in Baton Rouge.</p><p>“I’m pretty useless under the hood,” Goodnight admitted as they climbed into the truck. “I leave that to Emma, she’s the owner, but I can charm the numbers in the accounting books so she keeps me around. If we get there before noon there might be some lunch left for us.”</p><p>“You can just drop me off at the first repair shop we pass,” Billy said, feeling sulky and tired.</p><p>“Absolutely not!” Goody said. “I insist! I have seen my share of terrible parents dropping their kids off at this camp for years. You know some of them don’t even explain what’s going on to their kid? Just leave them there in a field with a wave and a smile. When I saw you with your daughter, I thought to myself ‘Goodnight that is a man to befriend.’”</p><p>Billy was trying to decide exactly how rude a request to drive in absolute silence would be when the AC kicked on.</p><p>“Oh thank god,” Billy said, as he melting into the seat.</p><p>“Yeah, it is a hot one out there,” Goodnight said. “Then again Louisiana in the summer when is it ever not?”</p><p>Billy didn’t answer, unsure of how to respond. He was bad with small talk, bad with people if he was being truthful, and wondered if the next few hours were going to be filled with the kind of conversation that would make him wish for death.</p><p>“You know I have to say that I am looking forward to reading Odette’s letter home. Bit of a storyteller that one, she gets that from me, and I can’t wait to hear her version of your tussle with that horse.”</p><p>“Odette?” Billy asked.</p><p>“My little one,” Goodnight said. “Ball of energy with the freckled face that ran right up to yours?”</p><p>“Hot pink hearing aid?” Billy asked tapping his ear.</p><p>“That’s her! She’s been going to that camp since it opened. Considers herself the welcome wagon. She’s a social creature, bit of a chatterbox which she also gets from me. How about yours? What’s she like?”</p><p>“Jee-young is full of rage and will probably burn a building down some day. She gets that from me,” Billy said.</p><p>He winced at how harsh the words sounded. He considered feeling ashamed, and then decided that if he picked a fight over parenting that would at least be an interesting topic that he had a lot to say on. Puffing himself up he waited for Goody’s response.</p><p>Goodnight’s laugh was rich, genuine, and unexpected.</p><p>“Full of moxie! Good for her. Even the shy ones do well at camp, but the ones with some energy to burn really blossom.”</p><p>“The camp,” Billy said. “Your daughter likes it?”</p><p>“Adores it. Don’t worry. You may not have noticed, but your little one wasn’t the only child wrestling with the water works. Though you were the only parent who got to wrestle with a horse!”</p><p>“I was ready to punch its teeth out,” Billy admitted.</p><p>Goodnight tilted his head, considering the statement.</p><p>“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man box a horse. I’m a little disappointed you didn’t.”</p><p>Something was happening to Billy’s body. Trapped in a truck with a man wearing alligator cowboy boots, and he’d was going from tight as a violin string to downright relaxed. He wondered if he’d been drugged.</p><p>“Now, Odette’s mama and I, we ripped each other up like a couple of rabid weasels before and after the divorce. We had screaming matches in restaurants that were so downright vicious the folk around us couldn’t help but watch, but I can’t honestly say watching a man fight a horse wouldn’t be even more entertaining.” </p><p>“If Nokk and I run into one another at parent’s day I’ll see what I can do,” Billy said.</p><p>That got another chuckle out of Goodnight, and Billy felt the tension leak out of his shoulders as the weighted pit in his stomach dissolved. Even the corner of his mouth kept trying to lift. Kept trying to <em>smile</em>. </p><p>“You got anyone waiting for you at home?” Goodnight asked. “Anyone you want to call about the car?”</p><p>And then Goody turned to him, eyes warm and blue with a smile on his face that rivaled the sun.</p><p>Billy’s mouth went dry.</p><p>“No,” Billy said. “No one.”</p><p>And for the first time in a long time the answer didn't depress him. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to the wonderful, talent, badass, and enchanting Little_Ogre!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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